There is discontent across the country, particularly in areas known as the “green belt,” swaths of countryside designated to prevent urban sprawl. Labour is well aware that the party’s plan to make it easier to build data centers could cause conflict between developers and local residents, according to two people with knowledge of internal party discussions. Residents in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Dublin have clashed with data center developers, complaining about the buildings’ insatiable appetite for power and water. All three cities have since imposed restrictions on new development.
“The question for national politicians, rather than for us poor little us, is: what does the country value most?” says Jane Griffin, spokesperson for the Colne Valley Regional Park, a swath of farmland, woodland and lakes on the outskirts of London where six applications have been submitted to build new data centres. “Green spaces with trees and lakes? Or do we want a huge, great data centre?”
The UK data centre market is highly secretive, with no official record of how many exist in the UK. Many companies reason that disclosing the locations of their server farms would expose them to potential attacks that could harm critical sectors. Microsoft, Amazon and Meta all declined WIRED’s request for comment on how many data centres they were using or operating in the country. There is also a range of smaller, more anonymous companies operating these sites. “Everyone just wants to hide and go about their business as usual,” says Spencer Lamb, chief operating officer of Kao Data, who says his company has four UK data centres that are either operational or under construction.
It is estimated that there are between 300 and 500+ data centres, with the majority located around London. What is widely known is that the amount of power the sector consumes is set to explode as AI drives demand. According to National Grid, data centres currently account for 1.4 per cent of the country’s total consumer electricity demand. Demand for power is expected to grow by 500 per cent over the next decade.
The location of those new data centres will be crucial, says Lamb. He hopes that Labour's strategy can prevent a repeat of what happened in Amsterdam, where residents complained about data centres concentrated in a small area. “If they were spread out across every country, it wouldn't cause pain and anguish for those people in a specific location,” he says. “I can remember [when] every city and town had an industrial estate within it. It now makes sense that we should place these AI factories [data centers] in the equivalent.”
But under a Conservative government, developers have gone wherever power is available, often encountering resistance from the community when they arrive. “At the moment it’s difficult to get access to both land and energy planning consent to build,” says Bruce Owen, managing director of global data centre provider Equinix UK. “The process is very long and cumbersome.”
